The Definitive Guide to Comedy
Jess Kelley-Madera, an independent improv comedy coach, used to perform at the Reckless Theater in New York City until the joint closed when its founder acknowledged his pattern of inappropriate behavior. Kelley-Madera has studied at the UCB and currently with the Magnet Theater. But she’d like to help be part …
Audible, Amazon’s audio arm, has ramped up its original comedy programming to go along with an already-robust array of audiobooks narrated by comedians this summer. To wit: In mid-July, Audible released both a podcast series from Bob Newhart as well as an exclusive audiobook-only memoir from David Spade. Since then, …
BBC Culture asked the world’s film critics to rank the top funny films of all time. They asked 253 film critics – 118 women and 135 men – from 52 countries simply this, “What do you think are the 10 best comedies of all time?” What’d they come up with in …
Amazon has picked up all three of its primetime comedy pilots that went up for public review in August: The Tick, I Love Dick and Jean-Claude Van Johnson. That despite Amazon’s own programming chief describing his new half-hour pick-ups as only “sometimes even funny.” Such is the state of “comedy” …
HBO’s comedy brand is offering something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue for Fall 2016, announcing new editions of Tracey Ullman’s signature sketch comedy, a revamped Def Comedy showcase series from Russell Simmons, plus stand-up hours from Silicon Valley star T.J. Miller, Pete Holmes and Jerrod Carmichael. Let’s …
Celebrity isn’t so much a foreign concept to Bo Burnham, now close to a decade since YouTube thrust him and his musically comedic skills into the limelight and our broader public consciousness. But how the famous interact with the rest of us continues to intrigue and puzzle Burnham, and in …
My review of Bo Burnham’s new Netflix special, Make Happy, is on Decider.com. What’s it about? I’ll let Burnham tell you what he says 45 minutes into his latest hour of comedy and art: “But for real. What is it about? It’s about performing. I try to make my show …
The idea, simple enough: Gather as many women in New York City comedy together in one place for a class photo. More than 200 showed up on a cold, rainy Saturday to Littlefield in Brooklyn. The result, palpable. Mindy Tucker, who’s tracked and photographed NYC comedians for the past decade, …
New York Times critic Jason Zinoman joined me for a special year in review of 2015. Instead of just glossing over the headlines like most year-end retrospectives, Jason and I debated what it means to be the comedian of the year and who deserves to be considered in that discussion …
The only thing more striking about Sara Schaefer’s recent Twitter photo of the differences between men and women in stand-up comedy today (circa 2015)? Reading her @replies and the outlandishly sexist men and mansplainers trying to set her supposedly straight. Which, of course, only reinforces her point. If you cannot …
